Hacking Virtual Reality

Contributing to a culture of pioneers, MIT students explore the technical, philosophical, and artful dimensions of VR

- Kathryn O'Neill

One of the newest makerspaces on MIT’s campus exists in virtual reality — where students are pioneering a medium so new that the terminology is still being defined.

In the hands-on humanities class CMS.339 students are grappling with multiple dimensions of making virtual reality (VR), among them: technical challenges, such as how to prevent the fatigue common to users of VR devices; philosophical questions, such as the difference between “presence” and “immersion”; and issues related to the art of storytelling, especially discovering the visual languages and narrative forms that VR enables.

“It takes eight minutes to learn how to make the 360-video camera work. The rest — figuring out the experience you want to make — is your mind,” says instructor Sandra Rodriguez, who first taught the semester-long class in 2017 in collaboration with William Uricchio, professor of comparative media studies. Their class, which made history as the first VR class ever to be offered at MIT, ran again this term.

INVENTING A NEW LANGUAGE

Offered by the Comparative Media Studies/Writing program (CMS/W), the new VR class appeals to students interested in the nexus of technology, design, and storytelling. Production in the class relies on tech elements — including the Unity development platform — and the course focuses on the creative works that the technology supports.

“A medium is a way of expression. With this new medium, we’re inventing new language,” says Rodriguez, who is also a visiting scholar in the Open Documentary Lab within the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and creative director of the EyeSteelFilm Creative Reality Lab.